The Press - Diversity and ethnocentrism

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There is a diversity of views that exists within multifaceted
institutions—"the government" and "the
press"—that often are written about as if each were unitary
and hence susceptible to broad generalizations and concise theories. The
reality is much more complex. In establishing the federal government, the
Founders set up an inherent competition between the prerogatives and
powers of the executive branch and Congress. On both the proper goals of
U.S. foreign policy and the best means to achieve them, moreover, there
repeatedly have been strong differences of opinion within the executive
branch, within Congress, and between the two branches. Thus, when scholars
discover that as many as 70 or even 80 percent of sources used in news
stories on some foreign policy issues are "government"
sources (either executive branch alone or executive plus congressional),
one normally need not be concerned that only one or two viewpoints are
being presented. Such statistics do point to a lack of aggressiveness by
journalists in gathering information outside official circles, however.

On any major foreign policy issue, the few thousand journalists who work
in Washington are almost certain to present varied perspectives based on
public statements, interviews, and "leaks" (information
whose source or sources cannot be named) from the president and members of
Congress and from the many thousands of officials who work for the White
House, for the other executive agencies, and for Congress. Especially
since the mid-1970s, journalists also have used as sources spokespersons
for affected interest groups, academics, diplomats stationed in
Washington, and experts from public interest groups and from the
capital's numerous liberal and conservative think tanks. As several
scholars have shown, foreign policy stories in the 1990s generally were
based less heavily on "government sources" (themselves often
diverse) than they had been thirty years earlier.

The diversity of views from sources is paralleled by the diversity of
views on foreign policy presented in the press. It is true that both the
number of daily newspapers (about 1,600 by the 1990s) and the number of
cities with more than one daily newspaper declined steadily throughout the
twentieth century. But these declines have been at least partly offset by
other developments: the widespread availability in recent decades of three
national newspapers (the liberal
New York Times,
the moderate
USA Today,
and the conservative
Wall Street Journal
); the growing use by many dailies of foreign policy coverage and foreign
stories from the news services of such papers as the
New York Times, Washington Post,
and
Los Angeles Times;
and the practice by many local-monopoly dailies of featuring both liberal
and conservative columnists. Also, the widespread publication of weekly or
biweekly alternative papers, many of which are distributed free of charge
and feature liberal or mildly radical perspectives, and the availability
of liberal and conservative viewpoints on the growing number of television
and radio news programs and talk shows, as well as at numerous Internet
sites, have all increasingly complemented the daily newspapers.

For Americans interested in foreign affairs, the greatest diversity of
views and depth of analysis during the twentieth century typically were
found in magazines. Mass-circulation weekly news magazines—
Time, Newsweek,
and
U.S. News and World Report
—generally were strong supporters of America's anticommunist
policies from the mid-1940s through the mid-1960s. Their coverage of
foreign affairs generally has become more varied since then, though it
sometimes comes across (like some newspaper stories) as simplistic or
overblown. It must be remembered, however, that news magazines are
intended to appeal to the general public, which normally is less
interested in foreign affairs than the much smaller number of Americans
who regularly read journals of opinion.

Among journals of opinion, such long-established liberal periodicals as
the
New Republic
and
Nation
have flourished, as have conservative periodicals, including
National Review
and
Commentary.
In the center, with much in-depth analysis of foreign affairs, are
journals like
Foreign Affairs
and
Foreign Policy.
Many religious and environmental periodicals also discuss foreign affairs
regularly. Therefore, diversity thrives in foreign policy coverage in
magazines.

As in most other nations, ethnocentrism—the belief that
one's own nation and its values are superior to all
others—has long been a standard feature of the American
press's reporting and commentary on U.S. foreign policy and on
other nations. Throughout modern American history, most liberal, moderate,
and conservative journalists have praised other nations that practiced
political democracy and freedom for individuals (for example, Great
Britain, Norway, and Costa Rica), and have criticized governments that
quashed democracy and freedom (such as Adolf Hitler's Germany,
Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union, and Fidel Castro's Cuba). As
the sociologist Herbert Gans has noted, the press's
"ethnocentrism comes through most clearly in foreign news, which
judges other countries by the extent to which they live up to or imitate
American practices and values."

During the Cold War, many newspapers and magazines—often including
the prestigious
New York Times
—applied the nation's core values unevenly by being much
more critical of the communist dictatorships that gave at least verbal
support to the overthrow of noncommunist governments in other countries
than they were of pro-Western dictatorships. Yet even during the long
struggle against communism, many newspapers and magazines sharply
criticized right-wing dictatorships in such allied nations as South Korea,
South Vietnam, Chile, and the Philippines.

The largest policy failure to which ethnocentrism in the press (and among
officials) contributed was the common assumption in news stories and
editorials from the mid-1950s through the mid-1960s that most of the
people living in South Vietnam deeply desired to continue to have a
pro-Western, noncommunist government—even if that meant having a
dictatorial and corrupt one. This dubious assumption, based on wishful
thinking much more than on facts, contributed greatly to America's
ill-fated war in Vietnam. Although the particular double standards and
blind spots of the Cold War era are history, the sharp criticisms of
mainland China's and Iraq's repressive dictatorships by
contemporary journalists of all political persuasions suggest that
ethnocentrism continues to influence America's news and commentary.